For those who prefer their
art more elevated and less popular culture-oriented, the MFA has four small
exhibitions sure to engage your eyes and brain cells.

The first of these is drawn
from the MFA’s collection of French pastels. Although you will know most of the
names—Cassatt, Degas, Manet, Millet, Monet, Pissaro—you may not have seen these
canvases as they have been rendered in pastels. There are familiar themes—dancers,
horse races, still life, flowers, water lilies, street scenes—the images
themselves don’t stay on display for long. That’s because pastels (chalk, soft
crayon) is exceedingly fragile. Even today, in which chemical fixatives
stabilize the drawings, pastels must be handled with great care. As you can
imagine, that was all the more the case in the 19th century.

Millet

I don’t mean to sound
pretentious in saying that I’ve seen a lot of 19th century French
painting. To me, Degas and other Impressionists are more striking in oils and
watercolors. My greatest enjoyment came from witnessing the pastels of Barbizon
school cofounder Jean-Francois Millet (1814-75). Barbizon artists—the name
comes from the French village from which Millet hailed—painted and drew in the
artistic style known as realism, which has nothing to do with looking like a
photograph. It’s also known as naturalism and is noted for its looseness of
form. What makes it “real” or “natural” is that its subject matter comes from
everyday life rather than being metaphorical, stylized, or iconized. Few have
ever rivaled Millet in depicting peasant and rural life. Millet’s pastels show
us ordinary people engaged in prosaic activities.

Thaulow

The other great joy was
seeing the work of Norwegian-born Frits Thaulow (1847-1906), who is in this show because he worked
in France and because he hung out with French artists. It’s always
revelatory to discover a new figure whose work resonates. I had never heard of Thaulow before, but I shall henceforth be on the lookout for his work.

I had hitherto also been
unaware of the work of Lorraine O’Grady (b. 1934). I have subsequently learned
she is the mixed-race offspring of Jamaican immigrant parents to Boston. When
she was in her twenties, her only sibling, Devonia, died. During her mourning
period, she visited Egypt, where she discovered that her sister had a striking
resemblance to 13th century B.C. Queen Nefertiti.

O’Grady is also known as a
feminist and performance artist, but the MFA show displays her photographic
prowess. On view are 16 diptychs (side-by-side panels) from her Miscegenated Family Album (1980/94). In
each, she juxtaposes an ancient Egyptian figure with a contemporary African
American. If you need more proof that race is a fiction we choose to imbue with
significance, it’s on the walls of the MFA. It’s worth noting that when O’Grady
began to assemble her work, intermarriage had only been legal in the United
States since 1967.

Sometimes small things make
big statements. The MFA holds postcard collections that are often dusted off
for thematic exhibits in the corridors and anterooms that house bigger shows.

What is propaganda? Although we generally think of it as a
negative thing, such a judgment is uncomfortably subjective. At its heart
propaganda is a form of persuasion—advertising if you will. The MFA features
150 postcards from the massive Leonard A. Lauder Collection to look at how war
was “sold” during World War I and again during World War II. You will see small
images from Europe, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Japan and the
messages tend to be the same, whether the image’s creators supported democracy,
monarchy, fascism, or communism. In each case war is justified, glory is
promised, and the enemy is Othered.

The show lets the images
speak for themselves and makes no overt political statements. One can debate
whether or not a given conflict is justified; what’s not up for grabs is that
war ever delivers upon its romantic promises. It doesn’t. Historians seldom
make universalist statements, but here’s one that works: The sides that go to
war never look the same when the fighting ends.

If you hurry you can still
catch the show devoted to the European world that spawned Giacomo Casanova
(1725-98), a man whose infamy is such that his name is synonymous with male
adulterers. Casanova was far more that that; he was also a historian of his
native Venice, a world traveler, a florid writer, and a courtier as well as a
libertine.

The MFAexhibit puts Casanova into context—perhaps
an important lesson for the #MeToo generation. Appalling behavior is never to
be cavalierly dismissed, but it’s generally the case that the parameters of bad
behavior are defined by historical circumstances, including changing views of
what constitutes acceptance, moral, amoral, and immoral standards.

I didn’t rush to this
exhibit for a different reason: 18th century Baroque art is my least
favorite. All of the frippery, gilding, powdered wigs, lunatic footwear,
brocade furnishings, fussy furniture, and ludicrous clothing makes my skin
crawl.I won’t pretend that I
spent hours in these galleries, but I spent enough time to say that the mood is
set by Canaletto’s large oil of San Marco Square in Venice. You quickly get the
point that great wealth, the quest for status, and unbridled power often go hand
in glove with corruption, sexism, and debauchery.

Boucher

The MFA goes to great
lengths to emphasize female power and resistance during the era, but it’s hard
to escape the fact that sex and power were linked to the disadvantage of women.
Even those women seeking to choose how to display or use their bodies did so
within frames mostly constructed and controlled by men. Egos and art were both
supersized during the 18th century. In fact, you could easily
conclude amidst the glitter and glitterati that includes large works by
Boucher, Canaletto, and Tiepolo, only the pornography was small. A small
curtained off side chamber displays some quite graphic imagery from Claude-Louis Desrais.
Apparently there was enough hanky panky to partially redeem Casanova’s
reputation. At the very least, he was in the swing, not the one who defined
swinger.

Desrais

Replace the word “pleasure”
with “sex” and you can draw whatever parallels you wish between 18th
century art, sex, and power, and how images, gender, and politics play out in
an age in which the Baroque boudoir is reborn as Mar-a-Lago.

Venerable institutions such as the Boston Museum of Fine
Arts (MFA) have historically catered to what is glibly labeled high culture.
They are places intellectuals visit to expand their understanding of the fine
arts and cultivate refinement. There is nothing wrong with that per se, except
that museums have become expensive places to visit—$25 in the MFA's case—and a
reputation for stuffiness doesn't exactly encourage the hoi polloi to pony up
serious cash. It literally pays to lighten up now and again, and it's in
everyone's interest to erode arbitrary barriers between art and non-art.

There's plenty in the MFA for devotees of the serious, but
in part one covering the MFA's fall/early winter season, let's take a look at
two whimsical exhibits, one that looks at a children's classic, and another
that features an experimental sculptor.

Christopher Robin Milne

I did not grow up with Winnie
the Pooh, but it has been great fun discovering him in the autumn of my
life. The MFA has borrowed 200 objects—ranging from drawings and letters to
stuffed toys, photographs, and posters—from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Only a curmudgeon sucking on a pickle could fail to be charmed by this magical
retrospective of A. A. Milne's stories and E. H. Shepard's artwork. The Pooh
oeuvre, if you will, consists of four collections of tales bookended by When We Were Very Young in 1924 and House at Pooh Cornersin 1928.In them we meet the principals of
the Pooh universe: nervous Piglet, serious Owl, sensible Rabbit, motherly Kanga
and baby Roo, grumpy Eeyore, bouncy Tigger, Christopher Robin, and the pivot
around which most "expotitions" revolve: the honey-loving bruin of
"very little brain," Edward Bear—know to all as Winnie the Pooh. (The
name comes from Winnipeg, a Canadian black bear cub Milne first encountered as
a military mascot during World War I that finished her days in a London
zoo.)Milne (1882-1956)
extrapolated Hundred Acre Wood from the Sussex countryside to which he, wife
Daphne, and infant son Christopher relocated after the war.

11 O'Clock is 'snackeral' time!

The MFA show amuses us through its variety, its playfulness,
and its utter simplicity. The opening gallery showcases the original stuffed toys
and a variety of early Poohphernalia—okay, I made up that word—such as games,
postcards, and foreign editions of the books. Then you enter the main
galleries, where you can stand upon a makeshift bridge as digital Pooh sticks
float from one side to the other. You can also sit by wall-painted scenes from
the books, or hunker down on all fours to spend time in Eeyore's house. The
main attractions, though, are pictures of Christopher and his family, and
Shepard's sketches that became illustrations for the books.

Silly Bear stuck in Rabbit's house

Pooh and Piglet tracking a wuzzle

Shepard (18769-1996) created ingenious illustrations that
paid great attention to natural detail. His was a great balancing act. On one
hand, he anthropomorphized stuffed toys to give each distinct personalities,
yet did so in ways that retained an air of fantasy. Pooh is real to us in
Shepard's drawings, yet he isn't. His deft touch engages the imagination—just
the sort of thing needed for a child of developing brain.

Trudging through the snow

The last gallery demonstrates how brilliant Shepard's
drawings were. We are shown—and I wouldn't use the phrase "treated
to"—modern adaptations of Pooh. In almost all cases, Shepard's pencil
sketches are vastly superior to recent color renderings of the Milne classics.
Worst of all are the regrettable Disney updates. Disney now franchises Pooh
stories and films, but it does so in ways that are bloodless and soullessly
commercial. You can buy a smiling Eeyore plush toy courtesy of Disney, though
why anyone would wish to is beyond me. If you're the parent of a small child,
by all means expose that child to the original; Disney knows the price of
everything and the value of nothing. I came out of the main galleries humming
like Pooh, but by the time I zipped through the Disney updates, the phrase
"That's all very well for some" echoed in my brain in an Eeyore
voice. Winnie the Pooh is a classic
that needs no updating.

Pop, op, and avant-garde artists have done a great service
in knocking the pretense out the fine arts community. I have had a fondness for
Swedish-born sculptor Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929) since he was briefly an
artist-in-residence at my undergraduate college, Shippensburg. Oldenburg, like
Andy Warhol, often made gigantic versions of everyday objects such as stamp
pads, ice cream cones, shuttlecocks, and saws. One of the points was to make
the viewer consider line and form in ways that move beyond mere utility.

The MFA show displays Oldenburg in a different puckish mood.
If you've ever been to any decent-sized museum, you will have encountered still
life oil paintings. Perhaps these don't float your boat; even some of my artist
friends see endless compositions of fruit, bread, and goblets as more of an
exercise than as intrinsically interesting. Dutch painters excelled at these—especially
in the 16th and 17th centuries—and for reasons other than
practicing their painterly chops. Still lifes often had embedded metaphors.
Skulls, for instance, often set upon tables as reminders that life was fleeing,
no matter earthly indulgences were consumed. If there was a main theme, though,
it was to call attention to the wealth and opulence of the Dutch Golden Age, a
time in which the tiny Netherlands was a military power with colonies, cutting
edge science, and wealth pouring into its ports. (The Dutch also controlled
much of the slave trade during this period.)All that fruit, meat, bread, and wine on the canvas
symbolized Dutch power. Think of these things the next time you see iconic work
from painters such as Pieter Claesz (above).

Oldenburg's shelves are riffs on and lampoons of Golden Age
still life. He uses soft sculpture, found objects, built forms, and paint to
build giant shadow boxes that are equal parts parody, surrealist, and pure
whimsy. Here are a few installations at the MFA show.

10/8/18

We’ve all seen the stories.
Try as it will, the Catholic Church hasn’t been able to bury its own recent
past, especially insofar as the predatory priest scandal goes. As I type, the Boston Globe continues to probe the cover
up its Spotlight team first unearthed in 2002, and a new report from
Pennsylvania accuses 300 priests of inappropriate sexual contact with children.
It’s all horrible stuff, but what does it mean to have been taken advantage of
by someone you thought had God on speed dial? Does one ever recover from such a
thing?

Roddy Doyle’s Smile seems to suggest that one can move
forward once enough time passes and other events of life compete for personal
memory space. His most recent novel centers on 54-year-old Victor Forde, who
has been carefully rebuilding his life so he can move on from recent bumps in
the road. He is newly divorced from his knockout wife Rachel, a celebrity TV
cooking show host, but the two remain friendly and she continues to offer
emotional support. Victor is also unemployed as his gigs as a music critic have
dried up, but he’s upbeat even though he has moved into a new flat in Dublin
near the seaside that’s less posh than his former digs. His is the classic
sorting of the things one used to think mattered versus those that really do.

We find Victor wallowing in
something approaching midlife contentment rather than crisis. He busies himself
by banging out chapters of the book Rachel encourages him to finish, and has
become a regular Donnelly’s Pub, where he makes new mates. He has even come to
grips with an incident that happened when he was a 13-year-old at a Christian
Brothers school. His French teacher, Brother Murphy, embarrassed him in class
by blurting out, “Victor Forde, I can never resist your smile.” This led to all
manner of hazing from classmates, which he tried to slough off. What he never
told them was that Brother Murphy, also the wrestling coach, once groped him
while ostensibly showing him a hold. Years later, the adult Victor has no
problem retelling this story on a radio talk program and dismisses it as a
one-time thing.

The only stone along the
path of Victor’s desire to get on with his life is Ed Fitzpatrick, a character
he meets in his new neighborhood. He’s the physical opposite of the trim,
polished, and fastidious Victor, but he introduces himself as a former
classmate from Christian Brothers. Ed looks vaguely familiar, but Victor can’t
place him, nor can he recall many of the old school incidents and people
Fitzpatrick mentions. He’s so insistent about them that Victor often humors him
and pretends to remember, but after a while, Victor is feeling creepy.
Fitzpatrick seems to know a lot about Victor, but it soon becomes obvious that
Ed is a loser. He’s slovenly, cadges drinks, and is always seen wearing the
same shorts and pink shirt. Is he some sort of cousin? A stalker? Just a lonely
guy seeking friendship? Victor is torn between feeling sorry for Fitzpatrick
and wanting to avoid him.

Doyle—known for works such
as The Commitments, The Van, and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha—never really bought
into the Celtic Tiger myth of Irish prosperity. His Ireland is a place where
things are often tough but unlike the portraits that appear in, say, Frank or Malachy
McCourt, Ireland isn't a place of unrelenting misery. Doyle books are generally
splashed with dollops of humor. In Smile
they pierce through the surfaces of caustic barroom banter. To a great extent,
in fact, Victor narrates this short novel from the observational vantage points
of barstools and pub booths.

Doyle’s greatest trick,
though, is to draw us into Forde and Fitzpatrick so completely that we don’t
expect the shocking revelations that come. These, including the very identity
of the book Victor is writing, will leave you shattered. This is more than a
book about what we recall; it’s also about how
we remember and why. Everyone
embellishes tales, but where is the line between memory and fantasy?

What's This Blog About?

Who needs to read about the latest pop chart tart? Who cares about another formulaic mall movie? That's what People Magazine is for, right?

Off-Center Views is for those who want to wade outside the mainstream without getting dashed upon the rocks of academic pretense, post-modernist mumbo jumbo, or high culture snobbery.

Look to this blog for reviews and opinions (including some truly cranky notions) on films, music, sports, art, and anything else that's on our minds at present. We aim to be provocative, but also entertaining and understandable.